When Things Begin To Fall Apart
by Arixa23
Summary: When Kooza and the Trickster begin to mysteriously deteriorate, it's up to the Innocent, plus Kooza's resident three crazy men and a thief, to find out what's going on and save Trickster and their world. This is kinda my baby Kooza fic.
1. The Tower

Chapter 1: The Tower 

L'Innocent was flying his kite again when the Kooza tower came back.

He was watching the turquoise and orange dot flying way up in the sky, and at one point he looked down again and there it was, just sitting there, as if it had sneaked up on him from behind.

He almost jumped out of his striped suit, and stood clutching the kite reel to his chest as he waited with a mixture of apprehension and expectation for the troops of gold-uniformed dancers and a tall, trim man with a smirk on his face to emerge from the round tower. Surely they would, with just as much noise and drama as they had the previous time?...

But the tower was dark. No beautiful singers stood in the upper levels, no ruffled footmen emerged. And the man with the wand who should have been there, had to be there, was inexplicably absent.

The Innocent reeled his kite in, and holding it protectively, like a shield, stepped closer to the tower to investigate. Maybe he just had to set something off...? He walked carefully, like he was navigating a minefield and any second everything could go boom. But the tower remained unresponsive and uninhabited, even when he circled around the back of it to see if there was anyone hiding back there. There was no one at all.

He went back around to the front, and regarded the tower thoughtfully. The red cloth hanging covering the bottom level of the tower was open slightly. The Innocent clutched his kite more tightly, and slipped inside.

The inside of the tower was dimly lit, and seemingly empty. It took the Innocent a moment to see the thin lattice of yellow against the back wall of the tower.

The Trickster was sprawled on te dark floor in his red and yellow suit, laying very still. It took the Innocent a long blink to believe that he was really seeing what was really there.

He dropped his kite and ran across the room, dropped to his knees by the motionless Trickster and patted his face frantically. Trickster's skin was waxy and pale, and Innocent couldn't see if he was breathing or not. He stared at him, horrified, with no idea what to do. Took a deep breath and slapped Trickster's face harder, pumped up and down on his chest, unskilfully attempted artificial respiration, all with no effect whatsoever.

This wasn't happening. It couldn't be actually happening. The Innocent swallowed. "T... _Trickster!_"*

The Trickster twitched slightly. His hand moved up and dragged against L'Innocent's cheek. A pair of electric blue eyes** opened slowly and stared into the Innocent's own wide blue ones. He backed away, stiff with terror, as the Trickster struggled upright. He looked completely serious, and more intense than the Innocent had ever seen him before.

Trickster snapped his fingers and held out his hand, as if waiting to receive something from Innocent, who stared at him in puzzlement. Trickster did it again, more emphatically. And it dawned on the Innocent that the Trickster didn't have his wand.

Ohh. He thought that L'Innocent had taken it again. L'Innocent grinned sheepishly and shrugged, showing Trickster that he hadn't got anything in his hands.

The two of them stared t each other for a long moment. Trickster's eyes narrowed, and he made a hand gesture pulling L'Innocent toward him. Nothing happened.

Trickster's eyes narrowed further. He took a step toward the Innocent, lost his balance, and almost fell. Innocent ran to grab his arm and support him. This was so _wrong._ What was going on?

Trickster looked down at him, blinked, and smiled rather inscrutably. He put an arm around L'Innocent's shoulders, and it was a moment before Innocent realized it was for support.

He wanted very badly to ask Trickster what in the world was going on, but the look on Trickster's face kept him still.

They went outside into the dark auditorium, the older man leaning heavily on Innocent. The hundreds of seats were all empty, almost malevolently so, as if they were watching and waiting... for what?

L'Innocent looked up at Trickster, who looked as if he was trying to figure something out. Innocent tapped him on the arm eventually. His expression said _Please tell me what's going on._

Trickster looked down at him through narrowed eyes. Then his gaze jerked upward suddenly, to something behind Innocent. He let out a hiss of breath.

Innocent turned to look. He shrank back - against the Trickster, as it turned out.

A triad of creatures were coming slowly out of the shadows toward them. They were more or less human-shaped, with long, scraggly black wings strapped to their backs and ripped-up fabric wrapped around their upper bodies, covering tattooed torsos and tucked into faded tights. But their heads, apart from a pair of deep-set, disconcerting eyes, were not at all human, or even mammalian. They were bird heads, with dirty white feathers, hooked beaks, and tufts of plumage sticking up on either side of their faces like demon horns.

They didn't at all look as if they belonged in Kooza. They also didn't look particularly friendly.

The air felt dry and electrified, as if lightning was about to strike. Innocent could feel static electricity making the hairs on his arms stand up.

Trickster sucked another breath in. The creature who appeared to be the leader of the three drew level with him and Innocent, and stared at them with black eyes much too human for the rest of its face. Trickster flicked his fingers at it, with no effect, and started making one motion after the other at it with increasing urgency. The creatures were around them on three sides now, and moving around to cut them off from the tower. The tower...

The Innocent glanced up at Trickster. The man wasn't exactly looking worried, but the furrow between his eyebrows was getting deeper. He didn't look completely awake - his eyes kept unfocusing and refocusing, and he was getting heavier across Innocent's shoulders. Innocent thought he probably couldn't beat the creatures to the tower dragging a half-unconscious Trickster with him.

All kinds of crazy ideas ran through his head. He didn't think any of them was likely to work, especially as he hadn't got a rocket launcher. Trickster was getting heavier and the things were getting even closer and...

Innocent yanked on Trickster's arm and motioned toward the tower. Trickster nodded, once. And they both just ran for it, Innocent half-supporting the Trickster, both of them dodging the creature nearest them as it reached out to intercept them. The tip of one of its claws caught Innocent's collar and ripped it as he dove through the cloth covering the bottom level of the tower, landing in a confused heap with Trickster on the floor. He tried to get up - maybe if they reached the second or third level the creatures wouldn't be able to follow them - but the Trickster motioned for him to stay down, cocking his head toward the outside.

The Innocent listened. He could hear the creatures outside, trying to get in, and he remembered that last time the tower had appeared for him, the closed velvet hangings had been like impassable barriers, opening and closing mysteriously, sometimes refusing to let him in no matter how hard he tried. And then sometimes he had found himself spirited up to the top with no recollection of how he had gotten up there. The tower was a mysterious thing. But for now, it seemed, the two of them were safe in it.

The two of them lay there for a while, as the scuffling noises from the creatures grew more erratic and then stopped - apparently they had given up and gone away, though Innocent wasn't about to go back out and check.

His heart was slowly slowing down from the rapid banging it had sustained since the creatures had showed up. This didn't feel like a dream. But if it was a dream, it was most definitely a nightmare.

He dreamt about Trickster and the Kooza world every night. He had never had a dream like this before. He looked over at Trickster's pale face - paler than usual, that was, which meant he was looking a little transparent - and his stomach knotted with the cold feeling that, though he desperately wished that it wasn't, this was almost certainly real.

And he still didn't have a _clue_ what was going on.

Trickster still appeared to be trying to figure something out. He tried to get up after a while, and after a bit of limb-sorting, he and Innocent managed to make their way up the stairs to the second level of the tower.

There were chairs up there, at least, the musicians'. The Trickster sank down in one of them relievedly and watched while Innocent went to have a look out over the railing to see what was going on down on the stage. The creatures were gone, and the stage was empty once more.

The musicians' instruments were all still there in the space where they stood - an electric guitar leaning up against a chair, a flute laying on a music stand, a keyboard. Nothing was missing, except for the people. It was just like every creature in the Kooza world had vanished except for the two of them, the Innocent and the Trickster. But then, the Trickster had to be there, didn't he, for Kooza to exist at all... didn't he?

There was a shout from below, suddenly. "Hey! Yoo-hoo! You up there!"

Innocent jumped, and then rallied. So they weren't the only ones here after all... maybe it was all right actually...

The shouting went on. "We _know_ you're there! Answer in the name of the King!"

Trickster gave a heartfelt groan and sank farther down in his chair. 

A/N:

*The significance of the Innocent saying things will hopefully become clear in the next chapter. Until then, you should just know that there is some.

** For those of you who are completely neurotic about this kind of thing, I am fully aware that Trickster has white eyes at least part of the time in canon. I do use this fact in most of my Kooza fanfics. For reasons which will become clearer later in the story, I had to give him eyes with some kind of coloring for this fanfic.

And, in other news, I have the first 8 and a half chapters of this done, but unfortunately I am a traditionalist and wrote it all... on paper. So I'm still trying to get everything typed up, and since I want to get all my other stories uploaded too, it may take a bit for me to get everything up. Be patient, please. ;)


	2. The Clowns

Chapter 2: The Clowns 

There were three people outside at the base of the tower, that Innocent could see. They were dressed in, well, more or less red and yellow - one of them was wearing baggy overalls, and the one standing next to him was bald and had what appeared to be an extremely large upside-down flowerpot on his head. The third man had messy gray hair and looked vaguely familiar to Innocent - he was the one who... had... put... a... crown... on... Innocent's... head... last... time... right?

There was also a rather large and floppy-looking dog.

Innocent waved to them somewhat doubtfully, and they all shouted at him in greeting at once. "So the kid's back!" the bald one squeaked - he had an extremely improbably high and squeaky voice. "Hi, kid!" Innocent waved at him, for lack of anything better to do or say.

"Is... uh..." The man with the messy gray hair indicated a swirly pointy hat and general tallness. "...He up there with you, kid?" Innocent worked this out, and nodded. He was slightly worried for the three (four? He wasn't sure where the dog came in) of them down there - what would happen to them if the creatures came back?

"Come down here so I don't have to shout at you," the messy-haired man commanded. The Innocent looked over at Trickster in the hope of getting a confirmation or denial of the probable safety of doing so. The red-suited man looked at him through half-closed eyes and nodded. Innocent trusted him to know, so he clattered down the metal staircase and went out to where the slightly odd newcomers were standing at the base of the tower.

"Hi, kid!" the squeaky one squeaked. The Innocent gave him a wave for the third time.

"What's he doing here?" his counterpart, the overalled one, asked. "Has he got _candy?_"

"Let's search his pockets!"

Innocent stood bewildered as the men tried to search his nonexistent pockets, and then fell down as the messy-haired man gave them a wallop alongside the head - from three feet away.

"Idiots! This is _his_ kid!" The messy-haired man indicated the tower. "What are you _doing?_"

"He's got a kid?" the overalled one asked. "He's not even _married!_"

"Shut your mouth!" the messy-haired man snapped. The overalled man shut his mouth.

The messy-haired man turned to Innocent. "They're a pair of complete doodoo-heads. Ignore them. I am... the King!" He flung his arms out in what was probably supposed to be a dramatic gesture, but only succeeded in whacking the Innocent in the head. "Oops! Sorry!"

Innocent waved the apology away politely. He really wasn't sure what all this was accomplishing.

"I'm Sergei, and he's Pete," the squeaky one squeaked, getting up off the floor.

"Am _not!_" his companion protested. Sergei ignored him. "What's your name, kid?" he squeaked at Innocent.

Innocent shrugged apologetically. All three clowns - they were clowns, he was pretty positive of that - looked at him strangely.

"Do you _talk_, kid?" Sergei squeaked. Innocent shook his head, smiling apologetically.

"_Can_ you talk?" the King demanded.

"That's kinda a personal question, isn't it?-"

"Shut _up!_"

Pete (or possibly-Pete) went flying back into the floor. The King turned back to Innocent, dusting his hands off. "I rephrase my earlier question. Can you talk?" Innocent nodded.

"But you don't?" Innocent nodded again.

"Why not?"

Innocent shrugged. He would be the first to admit that he was not intelligent, but even for him that question was very near the top of his Stupidest Ever Questions To Ask list.

There was awkward silence for a moment, while the King and his cronies worked this out. "Well," the King said eventually. He shifted gears, and looked at the Innocent suspiciously. "Are you by any chance connected to the three large birdy things which are wandering around this place?"

Innocent looked around, semi-panicky. "Ooo, he looks guilty!" possibly-Pete exclaimed gleefully. "Interrogation time!"

Actually Innocent had been worried by the reminder of the creatures, not by the King's question, but he didn't think he could get that across in mime. He watched bemusedly while the three clowns configured themselves around him in an extremely rough approximation of a courtroom. The King cleared his throat. "Is the court in order?"

"Yes, Your Majesty!"

"Your _Honor!_" possibly-Pete hissed.

"Your... Honored Majesty!"

"Good. Now... were you in, or about, this... tent... at any time on the - oh, what's the date today? Don't just stand there, someone get me a calendar!"

At which point someone cleared their throat.

It wasn't a loud sound. All it did was command immediate ceasing of all other sounds. The King stopped.

The Trickster was leaning on the railing around the second level of the tower, watching them. He didn't look quite as bad at this distance, but even someone extremely stupid could have seen that something was wrong.

He snapped his fingers at them, and vanished inside again.

There was a change in the air. The King blinked. "Oh," he said.

"Oh what?" Sergei squeaked, puzzled. "Shut up," the King told him quietly. Sergei shut up.

"What happened to him?" the King asked Innocent, his eyebrows getting closer together. Innocent shrugged hopelessly.

"Did you take his wand again?" the King asked suspiciously, as if he thought that the Innocent had somehow caused Trickster's incapacitation. Innocent shook his head. The King stared at him.

"So... he still has it, then?"

Innocent shook his head slowly.

"Where is it, then?"

Innocent shrugged.

"This," said the King, starting to pace back and forth, "is not good." He spun on Innocent. "And where did _you_ come from?"

Innocent shrugged again. He had no idea how he had come back to Kooza, or how Kooza had come back to him.

The King sighed. "You know," he said, "it would really help if you would talk..."

Innocent looked apologetic. The King was probably right.

"All right, let's figure this out." The King kept pacing. Sergei and possibly-Pete stared at him from their seats on the floor; the Innocent got the feeling that they weren't at all used to seeing their boss thinking rationally. From what he'd seen up till now, he didn't blame them.

The King stroked his beard thoughtfully, and looked out at the empty auditorium, only the few of them in the entire tent. "And everybody but us's disappeared. That's not a good thing. See, kid..." He lowered his voice. "Everyone here, in the show, we're all..." he nodded toward the tower "...his. He made this world, see, and everyone in it. So no boss, no other people, and maybe even..." he glanced around "... no world. But see, me and those idiots and the dog, we're clowns. Chaotic and crap, you know. So we're his, but we're ours too - we can go in the audience, maybe even outside, though I don't know about that. He doesn't _have_ to call us for us to be here. And what about you, kid? Where d'you come in? Are you a clown too, or what? You're not one of his people, he didn't make you, did he?" The Innocent shook his head. He didn't think so.

"Hm. You _look_ like him, in that outfit. Is that inten - supposed to be?" Innocent nodded.

"Huh. You do have a clown nose, kid." The King clapped Innocent on the shoulder as he was trying to look at the end of his own nose. "In that case, you can be an honorary clown. Welcome to the court."

Innocent blinked. All right then.

"And..." The King frowned. "You _aren't_ connected with those birdy things, are you?" Innocent shook his head.

"Is _he?_" Innocent shook his head. One of Trickster's creations would not have tried to attack its creator.

"Do you know who _is?_" No again. The connection had just occurred to Innocent, and he waited patiently for the King to make it too.

"Sooo," the King said slowly, "there are a bunch of unclaimed birdy things wandering around, annnd... the boss's wand, which creates stuff, is missing. And bad stuff is happening to the boss," he added.

"Those could be connected!" Sergei shouted suddenly, as if he'd had an amazing brainwave. The King stared at him.

"Ye-es," he said slowly. "They could be." And Innocent actually couldn't tell whether he was being sarcastic or not.

It was just his luck, he thought: something very bad indeed had happened, and now it appeared that the stupidest people in the world were the only other people (other than Trickster) who were left in the world. 

A/N: All right, time to discuss nonspeaking roles and their significance.

The Innocent is rather obviously (to me) a mime role. He doesn't talk. It's not that he can't talk, it's that he chooses not to. Perhaps there's some reason why he doesn't want to put his voice out there, perhaps he's too shy and prefers mime for expressing himself, perhaps he just feels he has nothing to say and sticks to not saying it. In any, case, there would have to be some very big reason indeed for him to ever open his mouth for it.

The Trickster, on the other hand, quite possibly cannot actually physically talk. He's not actually human, after all. But it's equally likely that he chooses not to in order to appear more mysterious and powerful. In any case, neither he nor Innocent is going to be saying much in this fanfiction.


	3. Introspection

Chapter 3: Introspection

"I think I get it," the King said finally, letting his breath out in a puffed-out sigh. "Someone stole his wand, didn't they? And now they're... using it..." He started gnawing on his fingernails. "Kid... what exactly happened when you got here?"

Innocent sighed - he'd known this was coming at some point - and did the best he could in mime. When he was finished, all three of the clowns, and the dog, were staring at him.

"My goodness," said the King.

"It's like the time when you and - !" possibly-Pete started, but the King cut him off. "Shut up. No, I don't _get_ it_._ I mean, I think I understand you, kid," he said hurriedly as the Innocent groaned, "but I don't get how that could _happen._ How anyone could knock him out, I mean. I wonder if..." He bit his lip. "It's weird."

The Innocent nodded. He would have said it was a bit more than that, but 'weird' was an okay starting point.

"So," said the King, and grinned. "Suspicious circumstances time!" What weird things happened today, you two?" he addressed Sergei and possibly-Pete.

"There were some weird big bird things!" Sergei squeaked, happy to be helpful.

"No, you idiot! We know that! _Other_ than that!"

"The kid showed up again and something's wrong with pointy-hat man," possibly-Pete put in. The King threw his hands up in the air. "NO! _Other_ than that! _Other_ suspicious circumstances than the ones we talked about already!

"Ohh," the other two clowns said simultaneously. "Huh," said possibly-Pete. "That lady who came in earlier was nice to Sergei. I call that suspicious."

"What lady?" the King asked, as Sergei glared at possibly-Pete.

"Dunno. She came in earlier today. She was kinda pretty, but too old f'r me. She gave us candy."

"Was she a stagehand or something?" the King asked. Possibly-Pete shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe."

The King rolled his eyes. "A stagehand. How suspicious. The only weird thing about _that_ is that she was nice to you two idiots."

"Humph," said Sergei, and went off to sulk.

"Heyyy," possibly-Pete the easily distracted said suddenly, an evil grin spreading across his face. "If _he's_ outta commission... does your remote control thingy still work, King?"

The King blinked at him, and pulled something that looked like a retro alien's idea of a remote control out of his pocket. He pointed it straight up at the top of the tent, and pressed a button. There was a noise like an electrical short, and one of the lighting scaffolds turned bright pink.

"All _right!_" possibly-Pete shouted, and the King grinned and started turning different parts of the tent different colors and doing some very odd things with some of the seats. The Innocent left them to it, and went back into the tower.

The Trickster was approximately where he'd left him, sitting with his eyes half-closed in one of the musicians' chairs. Innocent went and sat by him in another of the wooden chairs - he didn't know what else to do.

As he stared at Trickster, he noticed something odd - he wasn't a hundred percent sure, in this clown-induced lighting, but it _looked_ like the markings around Trickster's eyes were fading around the centers, from their usual reds and golds to something almost like a negative coloring, shades of shadowy, monochromatic blue and whitish. Innocent blinked.

Trickster gave him a quizzical, interrogative look, nodding toward the outside of the tower, where the King and his cronies appeared to be electrocuting their dog, though probably not on purpose. The Innocent shrugged. He was pretty sure that the Trickster knew at least as well as he did that the clowns were insane. He was actually surprised he'd been able to get anything at all out of the King.

Trickster sighed, and stared at his own hands as if he'd never seen them before. His eyes were still doing the strange focusing and unfocusing thing. Innocent was starting to get really worried about him - even more really worried, that was.

_Where is your wand, Trickster? What _**_happened_**_ to you?_

And then he wondered if the Trickster wasn't wondering the same things himself.

He had the feeling that he needed to do something. The problem was,he didn't have a clue what that something was. He drummed his feet on the floor. Trickster gave him a look. He stopped, and gave him a sheepish smile. Trickster smiled sleepily back at him in a shadowy version of his usual smirk.

At this point, the Innocent realized that his kite was missing and he had no idea where it was.

He couldn't believe that he'd forgotten about it all this time. Even when the skeletons had come last time, he'd held onto it until they had pinned him to the floor and ripped it off his back. He didn't let go of his kite for anything or anyone. Except that he had. And now he'd lost it.

He looked up. Trickster was watching. He was pretty positive now that the markings around his eyes _were_ losing their colors.

The Innocent blinked. Oh, what the heck.

He jumped up and ran down the stairs to look for his kite, pausing on the bottom step with his hand on the rail to look around the bottom level of the tower.

His kite was where he'd left it, lying by the entrance to the tower and a little to the side. He remembered now - he'd dropped it when he'd first seen Trickster.

He crossed the tower and picked it up, brushed it off, slung it over his back again. It was comforting to feel it against his body. He wasn't actually sure if when Trickster had refinished it with his colors he'd just redyed it or actually changed the cloth - he had a feeling that the cloth had been changed, it felt silkier and lighter than it used to. But either way, the frame was still the same.

You could depend on a kite the way you couldn't depend on a person. If you kept it with you, it would never disappear on you. And if you knew how to fly it, and the wind was good, it wouldn't let you down.

But now his kite was connected to Kooza. And he couldn't walk away from the Trickster now. Even though the man had teased him, scared him, laughed at him, and confused him horribly the last time he had been in Kooza, he had still... been on Innocent's side in a weird way that felt quite unique from the way anyone had ever been with him before. And now he, the Trickster, seemed suddenly horribly vulnerable and weak, and Innocent got the feeling that though Trickster wasn't saying anything, the creator of Kooza really did need him.

He sighed, adjusted his kite on his back, and headed back up the stairs.

A/N: This was a wee bit of a filler chapter, but it's still necessary... so sorry for the shortness.


	4. The Pickpocket

Chapter 4: The Pickpocket

The Innocent woke up and couldn't remember where he was. Was there a reason why his bed felt so... odd and cold and hard? He opened his eyes woozily and sat up.

He was in the floor on the Kooza tower's second story, wrapped in one of the curtains. He couldn't remember wrapping himself in it - either Trickster or one of the clowns must have done it after he'd fallen asleep last night.

Trickster. He looked around, concerned, and saw that the man in red and yellow was watching him from the keyboard player's chair.

He looked much worse than last night. The markings on his face were completely color-negative, not just his eye markings but his lips and the flames along his jawline too, and the color change was creeping up his hat and down his collar. It was if monochromy was spreading through his entire body from his eyes outward.

There were dark smudges under his eyes in addition to the monochromatic eye markings, and he looked exhausted. But his eyes were still electric blue, and they crinkled slightly as he smiled at the Innocent. Innocent smiled back, and raised his eyebrows.

He remembered last night only through something like a sheer gray curtain of unreality. Nothing much had happened. The King and his fellow clowns had moved away after a while, taking their dog with them. The bird creatures hadn't come back. After a while, he must have fallen asleep from sheer stress backwash. He assumed that it must be the next morning, but really had no way of telling, as the lights seemed to be doing their own thing independent of the time of day.

He wondered if Trickster had slept at all. He wasn't actually sure if the man ever slept - he couldn't really imagine him doing it. He mimed sleeping, with the standard hand-pillow, and raised his eyebrows at the Trickster again: ?

Trickster shook his head, and sighed. He closed his eyes.

The Innocent swallowed hard. He was realizing consciously just now what he'd probably suspected unconsciously from the first time he'd seen Trickster lying on the floor of the tower: The Trickster was dying.

He swallowed again. There was a lump in his throat which was making it slightly hard for him to breathe. Trickster _couldn't_ be dying. He was immortal... right? How could he be dying? How could he be like _this?_ What could kill a Trickster? What was going _on?_

Too many questions pounded in his head, and he didn't know the answers to any of them. But he did know that he needed to keep Trickster alive. He needed Trickster to be alive.

He stood up off the floor, shedding his curtain sheet, went over to Trickster and pulled on his arm. Trickster's eyes slitted open, and the Innocent hurriedly mimed _Stay awake._ Trickster nodded irresolutely, and Innocent grabbed his arm harder. _Stay _**_awake!_**

The Trickster looked at his terrified expression and sighed, opening his eyes wider.

And the Innocent decided that he needed to find out what had happened to Trickster and to Kooza. He couldn't just stay in the tower with Trickster until all his color disappeared and he wouldn't wake up anymore. He didn't really want to leave the Trickster alone either, but he _had_ to stop must be _some_ way he could find out what had happened and fix it.

So he slung his kite over his back again, and, casting one last worried glance at Trickster, left the tower.

There was no one to be seen in the auditorium, neither bird creatures nor clowns, not even the dog from the previous day. He looked around, up at the roof, looking for something, anything, he didn't even know what...

...And almost jumped out of his skin as a voice by his ear said "Hello, my friend!"

He spun around to see a tall, skinny man with slicked-back hair and a purple suit standing by his elbow and smiling widely at him. "Do not be afraid, ple-ase! I am sorry if I startled you, did I startle you? No? Good, I am glad. My name is Christian*, and today is your lucky day, my friend! Would you like to play a little game?"

The Innocent stared at him and shook his head slowly. He couldn't figure out why the man was wearing a clown nose.

"No? You wouldn't? Are you sure, my friend?" The man - Christian? - paused. "What are you staring at?" He looked down the length of his nose. "Oh..." He peeled the red nose off his head - it was one of the kind with an elastic strap holding it on - and threw it away over his shoulder. "Sorry about that, Now, are you sure you don't want to play any games? How about doing some magic? I'm very good at it, you know! I'll amaze you!"

Innocent shook his head again. Christian slapped him on the shoulder. "Good choice, my friend! Magic is an art for people with no taste! Ah, and I see you have a kite... what a nice kite..." He moved around behind the Innocent to admire the kite. Innocent tried to watch him, and discovered that his neck wouldn't turn that far.

"Well," said the man eventually, his voice sounding somewhat disappointed for some reason as he moved back into view, "since you don't... want to do any magic either, then, could you tell me where the audience has gone, my friend?"

Innocent shrugged up-and-down, making a wry face. Christian looked at him quizzically, and his asymmetrical eyebrows went up.

"What is your name, my friend?"

"It's none of your business, Pickpocket! Leave him alone!" The two of them turned at the King's voice as the clown advanced on them down one of the aisles, trailed by his two sidekicks. Christian frowned. "He was the only person in the tent, my royal friend. I was just asking where the audience has gone."

"It's none of your business where the audience is, either!" the King snapped. Christian raised his eyebrows again. "Look, my friend, I was not bothering this boy! Ask him if I was bothering him! I was just being friendly, do you want me to not be friendly?"

"Yes! I mean no! I mean go away! He belongs to pointy-hat man, Pickpocket. Don't mess with him."

Christian blinked. "Oh, he is the Trickster's? I thought he looked like a little horizontally striped Tricksterlet... But I was not bothering him. Was I bothering you, my friend?" he asked the Innocent, who shook his head. He actually liked Christian. At least the man appeared to be able to think more rationally than the clowns, though he couldn't quite figure him out.

"Okay! Okay! Fine!" The King threw his hands up in the air, his voice getting higher with every word. "You'll see! But fine!" He stomped upstage to the spiraling staircase on the outside of the tower - which Innocent could have sworn hadn't been there before - and sat down on the third step. The rest of them followed him.

"Okay, Pickpocket. The audience's disappeared because the boss is sick. Happy?"

Christian blinked again, tilting his head to one side. "The Trickster is sick? What do you mean, my friend?"

"He's gone all weird," Sergei squeaked.

"He's always weird," possibly-Pete hissed. Sergei kicked him. "Shut up. And everyone else's gone too!" he told Christian.

Christian turned to look at the Innocent. "You seem to be the sanest one here, my young friend, could you possibly tell me what they're talking about?"

"He doesn't talk, Pickpocket," the King informed him. "He can but he doesn't."

_I can mime, though,_ the Innocent mimed. The King blinked. "Yeah. He mimes." He stared at the Innocent some more. "You want me to... look over your shoulder... talk... talk to Pickpocket... about what's over your shoulder... sleeping... talk to him about sleeping? About _you?_ Tower? Pointy-hat man?"

"Tell me about what happened yesterday?" Christian put in helpfully. The Innocent gave him a relieved look and nodded emphatically. The man known as the Pickpocket - Innocent couldn't figure out why, he hadn't seen him pick any pockets - winked at him and twirled his finger around by his head, mouthing _Cra-aazy._ Innocent nodded again.

"Oh, yeah! The lady with the candy!" Sergei grinned, and his tongue started hanging out.

"Will you _shut up_ about the lady with the candy! _Forget_ about the lady with the candy!"

Sergei blinked. "What lady with the candy?"

...

The King managed to get the story across eventually, more or less. The Innocent was finding himself confused, and he already _knew_ what had happened the day before.

Christian seemed to get at least most of it, though. He nodded. "This is worrying, no?"

The King shrugged. "I d'know, it means the we've got the place to ourselves. And we can... hey..." He groped around in his pocket. "Where's my remote go-"

A hole opened in the stage and swallowed him and the two court jesters.

Christian turned to the Innocent and grinned from his seat on the steps, holding up something which looked suspiciously like a retro alien's idea of a remote control. "They call me the Pickpocket for a reason, my friend."

The Innocent smiled. He couldn't help it. He was impressed.

Christian slid down from the steps, tossing the remote from hand to hand before sticking it in his pocket. "They should be more worried, though. If this place disappears, where do they go? Me, I don't care that much. But it does work out well here. I make the audience laugh, and if I do not give the man's watch back, it does say on the tickets that the show is not responsible for losses, yes?"** He laughed, and then sobered up as he took a look at the Innocent. "But you look very worried, my friend."

Innocent nodded. He was worried sick, though he was trying not to let it show too much.

Christian put an arm around his shoulders. "All right, here is what I am thinking, my friend. I am thinking that yesterday, when there was no show, yes, there was a woman who came in when the tent should have been closed. I thought, okay, she is a stagehand. But stagehands do not usually sneak around trying not to be seen, am I right?" He paused. Innocent nodded.

"Right. And I thought that I had seen her before somewhere, also. But I don't know. I see stagehands too sometimes. Anyway, the clowns saw her. And she gave them... candy... Only this kind of candy was the kind that makes you roll around on the floor watching the pretty fireworks, you know what I mean? Don't accept candy from strangers, my friend. So the woman went into the tower, and then later she left."

Innocent stared over at him.

"I was not going to stop her, I mean, anyone who gives crack to the clowns, good job to them. But now the Trickster is in trouble, yes?"

_He's dying,_ Innocent mimed. The Pickpocket's brow furrowed. "What was that, my friend?"

_He's dying._ Innocent pointed toward the tower. _Go see for yourself._

Christian shook his head. "I can't get into the tower unless the Trickster gives me permission, my friend. He is not currently." He saw the Innocent's miserable expression and patted him on the shoulder. "But I believe you, my friend! I am not stupid, believe me." He sat down on the edge of the stage, his legs dangling over the auditorium's floor, and motioned for the Innocent to come sit next to him. Innocent did. "Okay, so we need a plan, yes?" Innocent brightened up considerably, and nodded.

"Okay, so here is our plan. We leave Kooza, look around the city a bit, go to the library and look this lady up. Then we'll see what we find, yes? I have a feeling on this one, my friend. Trust me."

The Innocent nodded. It was better than nothing.

Then he realized, and his shoulders sagged. He looked toward the nearest tent flap doubtfully. He had more or less always been _aware_ of the fact that Kooza was in a tent, dimly, but now he could really get a good look at it, and he wasn't at all sure how this was going to work. Maybe this was just a tent to Christian, but to Innocent it was another universe, and he wasn't at all sure if he was actually going to be able to step outside it.

"Unless you have something better to be doing with your morning?" Innocent shook his head without really listening.

"Good." Christian grabbed the Innocent's wrist - the man's hand was surprisingly strong - and towed Innocent behind him up the aisle and the steps to the nearest tent flap. He pushed it open with his shoulder, not letting go of Innocent's wrist, grabbed the surprised boy by the shoulders, and stepped through the tent flap with him.

The bright sunlight outside was blinding after the semidarkness of Kooza. Innocent yanked his hands free and stuck them over his eyes, blinking furiously as his vision adjusted.

"That worked well, didn't it," Christian said, beside him. "Welcome, my friend, to the outside world."

A/N:

*Sorry, Michael fans. Sorry, Lee fans (apparently they do exist - I was noted by one at one point, and she informed me of her existence). Christian's getting this one. The Pickpocket does introduce himself, after all... and the Innocent, not having a name himself, is rather name-fixated. (Whether or not this is actually the Pickpocket's real name is another discussion. Which we shall not be having right now.)

**Seriously. It does. That's probably not exactly what they meant, but... The night I saw Kooza, I'm not actually sure if the guy from the audience ever _did_ get his watch back.


	5. Outside

Chapter 5: Outside

As the Innocent's eyes slowly adjusted, and he took his hand off from over them and stopped seeing white afterglow, he saw that they were in a large, open concrete space, with a fence separating the tent from an even larger gravel space which seemed to be mostly empty except for one of two parked cars. He could see tall buildings beyond, on all sides. They were in a city. He could vaguely hear cars rushing by, and the air smelled sweet and mechanical, different from the rich, slightly gunpowdery smell of Kooza.

He turned to look at the tent they had just come out of. It had a pointed roof with a little flag at the top, and was colored yellow and red in a swirling barber-pole pattern - like the Trickster's jacket. Exactly like the Trickster's jacket, in fact.

Innocent looked over at Christian, who was watching him with his head on one side. "Interesting, no? But come on."

He led Innocent over to the fence, which was chain-link and about ten feet high. Innocent regarded it bemusedly. He had a feeling he wasn't going to like what came next.

Christian knelt down and locked his fingers together, offering the Innocent a step up. Innocent put his foot in cautiously. He was _not_ used to climbing fences.

It took a lot of wriggling and a bit of panicking before he made it to the top of the fence - luckily it was the kind which was topped by a round metal bar, not by jagged ends of chain link. He straddled it and watched while Christian stuck the toe of his shoe in a chainlink hole and legged himself up and over the fence to drop onto the parking lot on the other side. He made it look ridiculously easy.

"Come on, my friend!" he called up at Innocent, who was thinking that ten feet seemed rather more from up here than it had from the ground. "Hang onto the bar and drop."

Innocent was hanging onto the bar all right. He swung his leg cautiously over and eased himself off the fence, closing his eyes and letting himself drop. The ground was a lot closer than he'd expected.

"Well, we will work on that," Christian sighed. "Now, my bee-yoo-tiful car is over here..."

It was one of the two cars in the parking lot, a low, dark blue, mostly shiny convertible thing.* Christian hopped into the driver's seat over the door, and motioned for Innocent to get in the passenger's side before pulling four different sets of car keys and a comb out of his pocket. He regarded the comb and stuck it back into his pocket, then tried one key after another in the ignition. The engine started with a rumble on the fourth set. "It's always the last one that you want, isn't it," he sighed, replacing the rest of the keys in his pockets. He swerved the car out of the parking lot and pulled onto the main road, dodging around other cars like he was on a go-cart. Innocent gripped the side of the car, white-knucled and wide-eyed, as they zoomed along like contestants in some kind of odd urban racecar race. Christian was grinning like a maniac.

When they finally screeched to a half outside a large stone building, the Innocent was all too glad to stumble out of the car and feel the ground not going anywhere under his feet. Christian hopped out the other side and leaned back against the hood of the car. "That was fun, wasn't it?"

Innocent shook his head. Christian grinned and whacked him hard on the back. "Don't worry, my friend, I am licensed to be a little bit crazy. I will try not to kill you." He headed up the steps of the building, and Innocent followed him.

A sign over the door advertised the place as a Public Library. Christian insinuated himself inside with Innocent dragging awkwardly behind, winked at the librarian behind the front desk, who was staring at the two of them rather oddly, and went straight over to the bank of computers along the wall by the young adults' room, where he plunked down in one of the wooden chairs. "You know why they don't use laptops here?" he whispered to Innocent. "It's because you can't walk out with a desktop computer in your suitcase. I've tried. They don't fit."

He turned his attention to the screen, typed something in, took a piece of paper out of his pocket - he seemed to have very large pockets - and explained to Innocent, "License number." He typed some more things in, stuffed the piece of paper away again, and drummed his fingers on the desk as he waited. Innocent took a seat next to him and tried to look over his shoulder, with only moderate success.

The screen changed. Christian stared at it.

"Tia Rapez," he said under his breath. "Tia Rapez..." His fingers kept doing their drumming thing. He looked up sharply at Innocent. "Have you heard that name before?" Innocent shook his head.

"Me neither." Christian's fingers were still drumming, on the keyboard now. "Ah well." He typed more things in. Innocent had no idea what he was doing, only that it was probably illegal and appeared to be generating results. The Pickpocket smiled that very sharklike smile of his and write down some things on a piece of paper from the briefcase next to him, then swiveled around in his chair. "Okay, I have her name and address. She's in an apartment near the center of town. If we-"

"Are you with the circus?"

Innocent and Christian turned to look. There was a very small girl with pigtails and a green dress standing a few feet away from them, regarding them curiously. As they looked at her, she stuck her thumb back in her mouth with a _pop._

"Ah... yes?" Christian said.

The thumb suctioned out again. The girl nodded at Innocent. "Can he make balloon aminals?"

"No," said Christian. "But I can."

"Make me one."

"Okay." Christian produced two balloons from his briefcase, which he inflated and deftly twisted into the shape of something resembling a poodle inside a heart. "Now get your father to give me two hundred dollars for this. Very cheap."

The girl stared at him wide-eyed, her lip trembling. Christian sighed, handed her the balloon, and patted her on her head. "Now go away."

The girl trotted off, satisfied. Christian and the Innocent looked at each other.

"I think, my friend, that next time we go out in public I will have to disguise you," Christian said, shutting his briefcase with a _snap._ "People don't notice me, but they do when I'm with _you._ For God's sake let's get out of here before someone else starts questioning us and won't stop at a balloon." He saw Innocent's look at that and sighed again. "It is a job skill. I thought I'd better learn it for Kooza. It's better for people to remember you as the balloon seller than as the Pickpocket, you know? I always end up giving the balloons away, though. Always give the guy his pockets back, too. Well... mostly. I'm just here to have fun, my friend." He winked at Innocent. Innocent smiled shyly back, and Christian looked away, his face changing the subject. "Okay. Let's go see Miss Rapez."

The ride this time was slightly saner than last time, but not by much. Innocent kept his eyes shut this time, in the theory that it might help, but mostly all it did was help him fantasize about what they were going to run into next. He only opened them when his head banged into the seat back and Christian sang cheerfully, "We are here, my friend! You can open your eyes now!"

They were outside a three-story brick building, with a bit of landscaping in the front and a black door - a completely generic lower-middle-class apartment building with nothing whatsoever to recommend or distinguish it. Christian grasped his briefcase and sauntered in the front door, with Innocent again dragging timidly along behind him. "She's on the second floor, apartment 2C."

When they knocked on Miss Rapez's door, nobody answered. Christian knocked again, then opened his briefcase and pulled out a set of what looked like odd metal sticks on a string. "Okay, my friend, if anyone asks I am the handyman, okay?" He fiddled with the lock a bit, and the door opened gently. The thief winked at Innocent, and together they stepped into Tia Rapez's apartment.

It was more or less neat, and felt, well, like a place in which someone could and did live. There were a few carpets on the floor, trying their best to conceal the linoleum, and a light blue suede couch and chairs arranged in the living room. It looked like Miss Rapez was trying to make the place look like she had more money than she actually did, with not-altogether-unpleasing results. There were a few Indian prints hanging on the walls, and the place smelled like a mixture of lemon, mint, and incense, sharp and assertive and just a little exotic.

Innocent stood in the middle of the living room and looked around, his mouth open slightly. This felt too much like he was eavesdropping on someone else's life, which he supposed he was. It was different from visiting someone's home while they were there, in a way he couldn't quite define but could definitely feel on his skin. It felt wrong.

Christian, however, had no such compunctions. "Okay, I will be looking around for suspicious things," he told Innocent. "If you'd like to help, that would be excellent, but if no, okay." He evaporated down the hallway. Innocent wandered into the kitchen and looked through some cupboards halfheartedly, trying not to disturb anything. The dishes were glass, and he really didn't want to break anything.

He was peering into a salad bowl to see if it was concealing any suspicious substances when he heard Christian calling him from down the hall. "My friend, come here and look at this!"

Innocent followed his voice to Miss Rapez's bedroom, a red-themed, carpeted, incense-scented place - it seemed that this was where the faint sandalwood smell in the rest of the apartment was coming from. Christian was on his knees looking through her closet. He looked around as he heard Innocent come in, and beckoned. Innocent came over, and couldn't see what the man had been looking at - there were clothes folded on shelves, boots on the floor, a couple of the strange metal things devoid of any apparent purpose which show up in every closet sooner or later, but nothing illegal that he could see. He pulled a puzzled face.

Christian picked up one of the metal things, a pipe about three feet long with knobs on the ends and the middle bar wrapped in fabric tape, up off the floor. "Do you know what this is, my friend?" Innocent shook his head. It looked like a metal bar to him - you could maybe hit someone over the head with it, but that was a bit of a leap to be making in his opinion.

"It's a trapeze," Christian said. Innocent gaped at him. He held the bar up horizontally. "Trapeze, you know, you swing from it and do stupid tricks. They're not easy to find, you cannot just pick one up at a yard sale or something."

He replaced the trapeze of the floor and turned to face Innocent, hands on his knees. "So our friend here is connected with a Cirque," he said quietly - he pronounced 'Cirque' as 'Sir-quay'. "The flying trapeze, no less. Interesting, no? Now we just need to figure out who it is and hat the hell they have to do with this Miss Rapez, and..." He stopped suddenly, and smiled. "Hmm. And we will be all set. Yes?"

Innocent shrugged. Christian looked at him closely. "But you are still worried about the Trickster, aren't you. All right, let's go back to Kooza and see how he is doing. And then we can talk with the other clowns..." He flashed Innocent his shark-toothed smile. "Do not worry, my friend. I have a plan."

A/N:

*Of _course_ the Pickpocket has a sports car. What else?


	6. Plans

Chapter 6: Plans

"Thief!"

"Excuse me?"

"Vandal!"

"We did not vandalize anything!"

"Breaker-and-entererer!"

"WOULD YOU SHUT UP AND LISTEN?"

It was later, and the Innocent was beginning to get a really bad headache.

First of all, there had been the car ride back to Kooza, which was bad enough all by itself. Then, he and Christian had been chased across the parking lot by two completely random policemen and had had to run around the tent quite a few times to throw them off; the tent itself hadn't seemed to want to let them back in and Christian had practically had to threaten to cut a hole through it before the tent flap had loosened enough to let them through; then the policemen had turned up again _inside_ the tent and they'd only escaped because the bird creatures had also reappeared and the two of them managed to hide behind the tower while the birds were terrifying the policemen; when they'd finally come out of hiding they'd almost been blown up by the court clowns, who had somehow regained their remote and were messing around with it again; Christian had attempted to tell them what he and Innocent had been doing, and now there was... this...

"If you keep insulting me, my friend, or you are going to regret it!"

"I am the KING! And also I have a remote control, you... criminal! It is against the _law_ to break into people's apartments!"

"Since when do _you_ know what the law is? Will you SHUT UP for a second and LISTEN?"

"Arsonist!"

"SHUT! UP!" Christian clamped his hand over the King's mouth hard. "Arson isn't even related, my friend. Brush up on your crime dictionary. _Listen._ These are your ears, you listen with them. Okay?" The King rolled his eyes, not being able to say much, and Christian took a deep breath. "Okay. First of all, we did not _break_ in, we _walked_ in. Nothing was broken. I do not... break things. Second, there were suspicious circumstances. Third, we found more suspicious things _in_ the apartment, and fourth, if you even think of biting my hand, you are standing on a trapdoor right now."

"Mmf mrf," the King grumbled, and Christian released him. "There was no trapdoor here last time I checked, I don't _think..._ They're over there and there and there. Did you put in a new one? Hey you, did he cut any holes in the floor recently? What kind of suspicious things in the apartment?"

This, Innocent thought, was what you got when you tried to put together a plan to save the world with three crazy men and a thief. They were probably going to reach some kind of conclusion at some point, but whether it was going to be anywhere like in time was the question.

He glanced over at Sergei and possibly-Pete, who were playing tic-tac-toe on the dog using chunks of ham and pretzels (the difficulty of the game was increased by the fact that their playing board kept trying to eat the pieces), and then back to Christian and the King, whose discussion seemed to have calmed down a bit. "No, the boy and I are going to go and talk to her," Christian was saying. "And I'd rather have it happen today, so if you have nothing more to say, my friend?"

"Go talk to her? Go _talk_ to her? I demand-" Innocent braced himself.

"-that you take me with you!"

Innocent winced.

"You two aren't going to have all the fun, you know! I want some too!"

Christian, oddly enough, seemed unsurprised. "You know, my friend, I thought you might," he said, clapping the King on the shoulder. "All right, then, this is going to require some... disguise..."

...

It turned out to be only disguise of a sort. All in all, there was only a change of clothes, mysteriously provided out of Christian's briefcase, which seemed to be bigger on the inside than the outside, and some minor hair-tweaking, mostly to stop the King's from looking quite so much as if it had been done by a windstorm with hairspray. There was an argument about the crown, which the King wanted to take and Christian insisted would defeat the whole point, which was that they were dressed in clothes that would _stop_ people from staring at them in the street; and then they were somehow in Christian's car, Innocent feeling rather odd in pants and a sweatshirt and trying not to stare too much at the King's outfit, which had started out fairly normal-street-clothes but seemed to be trying to mutate into something very odd since he had put it on. Christian hadn't changed at all - apparently it was true that people didn't notice him. And they were off, with obligatory suspicious comments from the King, to Tia Rapez's place once more.

Innocent sat uncomfortably on the passenger side, gripping the front edge of the seat with both hands, while the King grouched from the back about how _he_ and not Innocent should get the front seat, Innocent probably wasn't even old enough to be sitting up there, etcetera etcetera. Innocent felt uncomfortable, to say the least. He knew Christian had something planned (or at least he _hoped_ so, though so far he hadn't really seen any proof of his, Christian's, long-term planning abilities), but the man hadn't shared with him what it was exactly, and all Innocent knew was that he was getting dragged around back and forth for unrevealed purposes, when he a. Really wanted to stay with Trickster, who he was worried was not going to last much longer, given how fast he seemed to be fading - literally; and b. Couldn't see for the life of him what all this running around after this Miss Rapez person was going to do for Kooza or for Trickster. Okay, she'd been wandering around Kooza before... whatever had happened had happened, and she had done something to the clowns, and she had what Christian thought was a trapeze in her closet, but what did all that add up to, and why were they chasing her around and not helping Trickster _stay alive?_ He felt shaky, and not just from Christian's insane method of driving.*

Christian glanced over at him, and took his right hand off the steering wheel to rest it on the Innocent's shoulder. "My friend, I promise you I know what I am doing, Please do not worry. I have a plan."

Innocent nodded noncommittally - _I know, you keep saying that_ - and nodded toward the front as the King screamed "Look at the _road,_ you idiot!"

When they pulled up at Miss Rapez's apartment building, the King whistled, resting his chin on the car door. "_This_ is where the Rapee lady lives?"

Christian didn't correct him on the name. "Yes, you don't get out much, do you, my friend?"

"Well, _no!_ This is the first time in... um... a long time! It was impressive how you got us out of the tent, I didn't know you could do that." He got out of the car, fiddling with his tie. "How do I look?"

"Very odd," Christian sighed.

"Says the guy with eyebrows that go up and down like a pair of... squiggly things. I think I look fine."

"All right, if you say so." Christian leaned toward Innocent and the King. "So you remember what we are supposed to be here for? You let me do the talking - that's for you,my royal friend, not our mute friend here - and keep an eye on the lady. Okay?"

The three of them stepped into the building, climbed the few steps to the second floor, and assembled themselves in front of Miss Rapez's door. Christian cleared his throat and knocked.

There were noises from inside the apartment, and after a moment the door was opened. Tia Rapez stood in the doorway, looking slightly puzzled. She was in her late thirties maybe, still pretty, with a couple of dyed streaks in her blond hair and a determined face, and looked as if she was not going to be very receptive to door-to-door salesmen.

Christian smiled at her. "Hello, good afternoon, we are from the National Census-Taking Society and we'd like to just come in and ask you a few questions. You are Miss Rapez, correct? My name is Christian Taschendieb,** and I... er..."

He trailed off. it was clear that Tia was not listening to him anymore. She was staring at him with her mouth slightly open in shock.

"_Pickpocket?_" she said.

A/N:

*Oh god angsty Innocent. I'm getting so tired of him being so angsty all the time. Toughen up, Innocent, seriously. -_- *sigh*

**...Honestly, Christian, do you have to _scream_ it? XD (If you don't speak German, stick Taschendieb into Google Translator.)


	7. Trapeze

Chapter 7: Trapeze

Christian's expression changed slightly. He took half a step backwards, as if he wasn't sure whether to run or not. Miss Rapez tilted her head to the side. "Well, well, well. What on earth are _you_ doing here?"

"Errr..."

Miss Rapez looked at the three of them for a long moment, and then her face broke out in a grin and she grabbed Christian in a hug so tight Innocent could swear he heard the man's bones creak. "_Pickpocket!_ You sleazy little German thief, I never thought I'd be glad to see you. Come in. With your friends, too."

"Not like I have much of a choice," Christian muttered from somewhere inside Tia's sweater as she walked him inside. "You are _squishing_ me, Tia."

"Oh. Sorry." Tia released him, and he sank down on the couch, rubbing his arms. "I think you broke my _arm_..."

"Oops. Sorry."

Christian grinned a bit painfully. "Heh. Not really, my friend. You have kept in shape, then, I see."

"Yeh." Tia turned her eyes on Innocent and the King. "Who are your friends?"

"A clown and the hula hoop lady's assistant."

"Hi," the King said, and sat down on the couch next to Christian. Innocent took a sideways seat on the couch arm. "Who are you?" the King asked Tia. The clowns weren't exactly the most subtle people in the world, Innocent thought ruefully.

"You don't even remember me?" Tia rolled her eyes. "I remember _you..._ The King of Clowns, right?" The King nodded, pleased. "You can call me Tia," Tia said, "but I used to be the trapeze artist."

The King and the Innocent stared at her, openmouthed.

Trapeze. The woman standing across from them was the trapeze artist from Kooza. No, wait, the former trapeze artist - a different one from the current one. Standing in front of them in an apartment in an anonymous city, outside of the realm, looking just like any other normal human.

Well, Innocent thought, that explained some things anyway. And made at least as many things even more puzzling.

"So, what brings you guys here?" Tia - the trapeze artist - was asking Christian, in a tone which suggested that what she wanted to ask more was 'What are you doing out of Kooza, and the hell took you so long?'

"Hey, I just found your contact info, m'friend," Christian sighed. "I've been working in a nightclub downtown for the last year, and my friends here, well, actually I have no idea what they do -" Tia laughed as if it was the obligatory thing to do - "- but they're not with the circus anymore either, if you know what I mean."

"Oh? Okay, I can understand that." Miss Rapez looked sideways at Christian.

"It was a misunderstanding," he said.

"Sure it was. So, you guys want to stay for lunch?"

"Sure, free food is always nice."

Tia rolled her eyes again. "Don't push me. If you weren't from Kooza, I would be kicking your butt downstairs right now."

"Hooray, even more broken bones. You haven't changed, have you, Tia?"

"No, I have." A flicker of something like sadness crossed Miss Rapez's face for a moment, and then disappeared. "Though I see _you_ haven't. So what's life been like over there? You said you were still there until a year ago?"

"Something like that. It's mostly the same. There's a hula hoop lady instead of the juggler, but that's it, pretty much."

"Yeah, you said. What happened to the juggler?"

"I don't know. He disappeared."

"Hehhh. Yeah, like me, right?"

"Probably."

"What about his assistant?" Tia sat down on the other couch arm, across from the Innocent.

"Dunno. I don't keep track of them."

"There was only one last time I checked," Tia laughed. "Have they multiplied?"

"It is not my job to keep track of every assistant to every performer in the realm, Tiahhhh. What's for lunch?"

"Pasta. And not a lot of it either. Sorry. I work full-time packing groceries, it's not exactly the highest-paying job in the world. Next time, call me before you invite yourself and half of everyone from your world over."

"Oy, it's not _my_ world, Tia, it's the Trickster's."

Tia looked away. "I know," she said.

"He was a jerk to you, Tia," Christian said quietly, strangely out of character. "It wasn't your fault."

The former trapeze artist looked for a moment as if she was about to say something extremely snarky, at best. Then she smiled. "I know. Come on, lunch?"

...

_There is no way,_ Innocent thought, _that we are ever going to be able to get back to Kooza in time._

It was something like a few hours later, though he wasn't sure how much time had passed exactly. The four of them were hanging out on in the living room again, sprawled out on the couch and the floor, small portions of pasta having been consumed and digested, and Tia was grilling Christian and the King on everything that had happened in Kooza since she had been gone. It was almost creepy, the way she drank in everything they said and did, as if she was trying to soak up the aura of the realm through her ears and eyeballs. It wasn't as if the pickpocket and the clown were the most representative of the talents Trickster had created (or gathered? Innocent wasn't actually sure where Christian had come from originally), but apparently anyone from Kooza was better than no one. Which might have explained why she was ignoring _him,_ if he hadn't been relabeled assistant to the hoop manipulator. He wasn't sure what that was about, except that Christian apparently had some reason for lying about Innocent's origins. As it was, he figured that Tia wasn't paying as much attention to him because A. he wasn't talking, and B. she'd never known him when she'd been part of Kooza.

As far as the Innocent could figure out, her story went something like this: She had been the trapeze artist in the realm until a few years ago, when... something went wrong. Something involving her and the Trickster, which they weren't discussing openly. And apparently she had been kicked out. Left in the outside world to live and age like other humans, to work in a grocery store. It was evident that she missed her realm very much, and she always changed the subject whenever the conversation got too close to the Trickster.

But, Innocent thought, what did an ex-trapeze artist have to do with Kooza and Trickster falling apart? The pieces were not matching up for him at all.

"Tia," Christian said, "I'm sorry, but we have to go soon. I work nights, you know?"

"Okay." Tia pushed herself up on her elbows. "Can I talk to you for a minute before you go, though? Privately?"

"Sure. Wait here, my friends," Christian told the King and the Innocent, and went off with Tia into the adjacent room.

"Well," the King asked Innocent in the sudden silence, "what do you think? Crazy, huh?" Innocent nodded.

"A random trapeze lady. How does he know? I don't even remember her. You don't remember her, do you?" There was a slight pause. "Then again, I don't remember a lot of things."

Innocent laughed nervously, and mimed someone with a pointy hat falling asleep. "Tired?" the King asked him. Innocent shook his head.

"I wonder what they're doing in there," the King said. "...Hey, that isn't her bedroom they went into, is it?"

Innocent looked at him sideways. _Well?_

"Never mind. Let's not continue that thought."*

_Good idea,_ Innocent decided. He had enough to worry about already without going _there_. Wherever _there_ was.

They waited, and waited some more. The King checked a nonexistent wristwatch. The Innocent jiggled his knees up and down and tried not to have a panic attack.

The door to the bedroom opened again eventually, and Christian came out followed by Tia. "Okay, m' friends, all ready to go and everything?" The King nodded. "We've been waiting for seven million _years,_ of course we're ready! What were you _talking_ about?"

"Sorry, my friend. We just had to catch up on some things." Christian glanced back at Miss Rapez. "See you soon, Tia."

She smiled enigmatically. "Yes. See you soon." Innocent couldn't read her expression at all.

"Oh, and Pickpocket?" she said when they were almost at the door. Christian turned. "Yes?"

"I do speak some German."

"Oh."

"Next time, try not to make your pseudonym quite so glaringly obvious?"

"Sorry, Tia."

"Just a tip."

"Okay, thank you." Christian paused. "Do you have any idea what 'pickpocket' is in Japanese?"

"_Pickpocket. _Come _on_."

"Sorry. Bye, Tia."

"Goodbye, Pickpocket. And King. And assistant. Thank you for coming. I missed you guys." Her smile, much more open than the previous one, was the last thing the Innocent saw before she closed the door on them.

"That," said the King eventually, after a moment of silence as they walked down the hallway, "was _extremely _random."

A/N: I'm sorry it took me so awfully long to get this chapter up! A lot of things have been going on in my life, including two productions of Shakespeare at once, and I hurt my wrist, so I was unable to type for a bit... and then, on top of that, I had to rewrite this chapter pretty much completely - Tia comes out differently pretty much every time I write her, but this time I think I got more or less what I was going for. She's a lot more like the current trapeze artist than I had originally intended, but that works out okay.

Ask me if you have any questions about this chapter, I feel like I might have not made some things as clear as they could be...

*I'm sorry, this is just my brain. It's so corrupted. I need to stop hanging out with theatre people...


	8. Change of Plans

Chapter 8: Change of Plans

"Shush," Christian said, and practically dragged Innocent and the King down the stairs to the car. "What _were_ you and-?" the King started as he clambered into the back seat, and Christian cut him off. "I said be quiet, my friend."

"Are you okay?" the King demanded. "You sound all weird."

"I am perfectly okay, thank you. I am okey-dokey." Christian turned the key in the ignition, pulled them out of the parking lot at an amazingly normal speed, and turned the corner at the next block, at which point he hit the accelerator with enough force to put his foot through the floor.

The King and the Innocent held on for dear life, the King screaming his head off and Innocent too terrified too make any noise at all. This was not Christian's normal crazy driving. This was Christian trying hard to get as far away from something as he possibly could in as little time as possible.

"What are you doing?" the King wailed. "You're going to kill us!" Christian muttered something under his breath which neither King nor Innocent heard, but slowed down and pulled into an empty parking space on the side of the street. He relaxed his grip on the steering wheel and sank down in his seat, his head coming to rest on the wheel. "Damn trapeze artists. Damn all trapeze artists. Damn damn damn damn damn damn damn."

The King and the Innocent stared at him. "I thought she seemed nice," the King said weakly. The Pickpocket didn't answer.

"What _happened?_" the King asked him, after a short pause.

"She is the one who stole the wand," Christian said matter-of-factly. "She is trying to kill the Trickster. She wants Kooza for herself."

There was another short pause.

"_What?_" the King almost shouted.

"Do you want to know what happened in that room, my friend? I will tell you. She told me everything she had done. She is proud of it. She wants me to help her. Apparently she thinks that because I am a thief I have no morals. She wants me to gather information about everyone who is sympathetic to the Trickster so she can get rid of them. She threatened me." He turned his head and smiled at them in a not-at-all-amused way. "Said she would kill me if I didn't help her. So I said yes. Are you happy now? Hm? Happy?"

"Wait," the King said in a not-happy-at-all tone. "You said _yes?_"

"Yes. I said yes. No, I am not going to help her. If I had said no in there, my friend, she would have beaten my head in with a trapeze then and there, just like she did to the Trickster."

"She _what_ the Trickster?"

Christian looked at the King, deadpan. "She hit him on the head with her trapeze. It's not funny. It's a solid metal bar. She's strong enough to kill a human, but she decided after he survived that it would be more satisfying to let him die slowly. Because she's so nice like that."

"Hang on," the King said hurriedly. "This is still the Tia lady we're talking about, right? The one we had lunch with?"

"Yes."

"You took us to lunch with a crazy murderer lady?"

Christian groaned, and buried his face in the steering wheel again. "I didn't _know,_ my friend. I suspected, but I didn't know. I remembered her as being a little bit crazy, but we're _all_ a little bit crazy, and she was not this bad before she... uh, left."

"Yeah, and what's with _that?_" the King went on. "What's she doing out here if she's a trapeze artist, huh?"

"She was an experiment," Christian said quietly. "She went on aging even though she didn't have to. She got too old for trapeze. So the Trickster kicked her out."

"Pickpocket," the King said.

"What?"

"Your accent's slipping."

Christian yanked himself upright. "What? Really? Shit. In which direction?"

"It's getting more... English-y. I think."

"Oh. Okay. Thanks."

"So what are you going to do?" the King asked him, after a pause.

"What am I going to do?" Christian snapped. "I am going to do nothing whatsoever, my friend. I am going to take a drive around the city until whatever happens has happened, and then I am going to go find a job somewhere else. This is not a game, and I have no particular desire to either help Tia or save Kooza."

"_Save_ Kooza?" the King said slowly.

"It's not going to stay alive without the Trickster," Christian said matter-of-factly.

"What about _me?_" the King demanded. Christian was silent.

"_Pickpocket!_ What about _me?_"

"I don't know," Christian said eventually. "You might stay alive. You've been outside. I do not know how it works." His accent was slowly returning. Innocent thought this might be a sign that he was calming down, or perhaps not.

"I _might_ stay alive, and you're _going for a drive?_"

"Yep," Christian said. The King gaped at him, speechless.

"You... _butthead,_" he said.

"My friend, I am not going to get myself killed over you. I am not a Koozian, I am a criminal, and if you think I am going to sacrifice myself for _you,_ you are very much mistaken."

So that was it, then. No more Kooza. No more Trickster. No more anything whatsoever.

Innocent felt like he might pass out. His vision was literally going white.

Christian glanced over at him, apparently noticing something out of the corner of his eye. He sighed. "I am _sorry,_ my friend. But there is nothing I can do. She kills people."

"What do you mean, nothing you can do?" the King spluttered. "You can go and break into her house and steal the wand, can't you?"

"While she's _there?_ She keeps the wand with her all the time. I am not suicidal. _You_ can try it if you want."

"Buttface," the King said, apparently for lack of any more relevant comment.

"Please shut up," Christian said.

The next few hours were rather... tense.

Christian and the King were not speaking, at least no more than to throw occasional curses at each other. Well, to be fair, the vast majority of the curses came from the King, and after a while he apparently ran out of words and started blowing raspberries. Christian produced some headphones and put them on, blocking out the King's onslaught so that it annoyed the Innocent much more than its intended recipient.

Innocent was definitely not speaking to anyone, even less so than he had been before. He stared out the rolled-down window - Christian was indeed driving around the city, and it would have been rather interesting in a different situation, but Innocent didn't really see any of it.

He couldn't believe this. He should have seen it coming, he told himself. He had thought that the adults were going to go and fix everything, that they had some miraculous, fool-proof plan, and had forgotten that he was really dealing with some clowns and a criminal. Of course they wouldn't have been able to do it. Of course Christian wasn't _going_ to do it, even if it was possible.

He didn't even have the energy to glare at either one of the people he was sharing the car with. He stared off into space and contemplated life without Kooza.

It wasn't like he had been living in Kooza before. It wasn't like he'd _known_ for sure that he would ever be able to return. It wasn't like he really knew the Trickster, or the clowns, or the world. But in the last few days, he'd come to feel like it was part of him, something which he belonged to more than anything else in the world, the only place where he felt _right._ Even in its weakened, twisted state, it was a much, much better place than where he'd been before.

Oh, all right, he thought. I can always go throw myself under a train or something. It's not like the world actually _wants_ me. A fat lot of help I've been to the only person who ever really needed me.

"Ow," said the King. "Ow ow _owww_."

A/N: Many revelations... XD And cliffhanger ending...

This probably really needs proofreading. I've been slogging through this chapter for a few days now, trying to get it finished (I had to rewrite it from scratch to account for a character discrepancy in the Pickpocket, it's going to be like that for the next few chapters), and Hum Jaisa Na Dekha is currently blocking out all my brainwaves. So point out to me if you see anything obviously wrong with this, please.


	9. Speeding

Chapter 9: Speeding

"Ow," the King said again. "Jeez. Wh..."

Innocent took a moment or two to register the fact that 'Ow' was not a curseword or a raspberry noise, and snuck a glance into the back seat. The King winced back at him. "Cramps."

Innocent tapped on Christian's arm, and, when he failed to get a response, yanked off his headphones. Christian turned to him indignantly, and Innocent nodded at the back seat.

"I'm sick," the King explained helpfully. Christian pulled over to the side on the road, turned around backward in his seat, and eyed him for a minute. "You're going staticky," he said, fascinated.

He was right. The King's skin was flickering, like it had gone transparent and there were circuits shorting under his skin. Innocent had a feeling that this was not a good sign. The King, apparently operating under the same set of assumptions, said something very rude indeed.

"Well, there goes Kooza. Time for me to leave," Christian said cheerfully, swinging his legs out of the car through the open window. "Byeeee! - Excuse me? Let go, my friend?"

"No," the King said, maintaining his grip on Christian's wrist. "Look at yourself."

"Why?" Christian looked down at his hands. And stared.

"Ohmondieu," he muttered. It occurred to Innocent, in the way that you notice things which don't really matter at all when you're about to die, that this was almost certainly the wrong language.*

Christian, legs still dangling out the window, yanked up his sleeves and stared at his lower arms. "No. No way. Not happening. I'm not from... I'm _human!_ You- This is _not_ _fair_!"

The King grinned evilly. "We've marked you. Kooza's not just a place to stay for the weekend and leave, thief. If we're going down, you're coming with us."

The Innocent didn't have a clear view of what was going on until Christian slumped back into the driver's seat, but he had already realized what he was going to se. The Pickpocket was crackling too - not as dramatically as the King, but still undeniably short-circuiting. Innocent took a look at his own hands, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Strange, he thought - so Kooza had claimed Christian for its own, but not him. This depressed him, in a stupid way. If all the people who he had ever met and actually liked were going to die, he wasn't sure he wanted to stay behind.

Christian took a deep breath, like he was having trouble getting air into his lungs, and swerved onto the road, stomping on the gas again. If they made it through this alive, they were probably going to be arrested for continual violation of the speed limit. "We're going back to the crazy trapeze artist's house. You were right, my friend, that stupid wand is our last chance."

"You're such a selfish bastard," the King muttered. "Don't run into any trees."

"Shut up and I won't," Christian snapped. "I'm the one who is going to get his head bashed in by a trapeze in five minutes, you can go find the wand yourself if you're so smart. Okay?"

"Fi-owwww... How much time do we have?"

"I don't know! Almost dying is not my hobby!"

The two of them continued to argue with each other as they sped through the city streets. Innocent prayed that they wouldn't run into any policemen. That was not something they could afford to deal with right this moment.

He found all this strangely exciting - at least they were _doing_ something! Something which might actually result in Kooza's getting rescued! He'd already had the realization that Christian was not overly inclined to risk his own neck for others, but it was also apparent that if anyone could steal back the Trickster's wand from under Tia's nose, Christian could.

"Policeman," the King said warningly. Innocent looked. There was indeed a blue-and-white police car parked by the side of the road, lights flashing lazily, just waiting for a car full of idiots who were going ninety miles per hour in a 45-mile per hour zone. Its headlights came on as they approached.

"Shit," Christian said. "Okay, hang on." They sped up as they passed the police car, a feat which Innocent wouldn't have thought possible, and as it pulled out to follow them, Christian swerved them onto a side street, then another and another, until there was no way that anyone could have followed them. Pedestrians and bicyclists ran out of their way screaming.

"You are going to be in _so_ much trouble." the King said, grinning.

"Nah. They won't catch up with me. Besides, if we are all alive at the end of this, I will not care all that much. You, my friend?"

"As long as you don't expect me to pay. Hey, are we lost?"

"No."

"If you say so." The King paused. "We'd better not be, 'cause I'm flickering more."

"Shhhhhh."

Amazingly, they really weren't lost. Christian managed to get them to Tia's house in something like five minutes - it was like he had some kind of magnetic homing device or something. But even so, by the time they got there, the King was curled up in a ball in the back seat, and Christian's flickering had intensified to a point where it looked distinctly uncomfortable even from the outside. Innocent was still, he had to admit, a trifle sulky over the fact that he apparently wasn't Koozian enough to suffer any ill effects.

Christian jumped out of the car, grabbing his briefcase as he did so. "Okay, m'friends," he said, scanning the parking lot. "Our friend's car isn't here, so I'm going to go inside. If we all die anyway, I'm sorry." And he was gone.

Actually, we're going to follow him into the apartment and leave the Innocent behind for a few minutes, because to be honest he isn't really going to be doing anything very interesting until Christian gets back. If you like, you can picturing him shifting uneasily around and picking at the seams in the leather of his seat and glancing at the King every once in a while and eventually ending up sinking down and staring at the plastic of the door's interior in the blank way who has nothing at all to do with himself. But, for the sake of not boring ourselves to tears along with him, we're going to follow the Pickpocket instead.

The thief slipped into the building, cursing under his breath everything which had conspired to make him ever enter that stupid yellow-and-red tent. It had been a whim, an interesting place to explore, an episode of magic in a happy-go-lucky life. It wasn't supposed to be something he was going to _die_ for.

Well, too late now, he decided. It wasn't that he was a coward. It was just that he avoided direct conflict whenever possible, which was pretty much whenever the crisis didn't involve him directly. At this point, he didn't have much to lose if Tia caught him.

He knocked on her door first, in case she happened to be at home - in which case he didn't have much idea of what he was going to do, except try to put her out of action and probably get put out of the action himself in the process. But nobody answered, so he picked the lock casually and let himself in.

The problem was, from what he knew of Tia she wasn't going to let the wand out of her sight unless she had a hiding place which she thought was more secure than her own physical security. But he had to at least try.

So after checking behind the pictures on the wall, of which there were not many, he headed for her bedroom, which was usually where people kept their valuables for some reason. After a little thought, he opened the window in case someone came home and he needed a quick and discreet escape route.

Searching in the closet and beneath the rug yielded nothing, so he performed a little tap dance on the floor to check for hollow-sounding boards. And lo and behold, there was one spot, almost but not quite underneath her low, faux-Indian-style bed, which practically shouted _I'm a secret compartment!_ at him. So he knelt and peeled the short floorboard up, and there was the Trickster's wand, staring back at him.

Several warning bells went off in his head. This was _way_ too easy.

"You're right," Tia said behind him. "It is."

The Pickpocket straightened up slowly, holding the wand slightly behind him so the trapeze artist couldn't grab it. "Hello, Tia."

"I'm not _stupid,_" Tia said. She was leaning against the doorframe, in a tank top and rolled-up jeans, and to the Pickpocket's extreme relief, she wasn't holding her trapeze. She still looked plenty menacing without it. The electricity crawling under her skin was just visible from where he stood, and it didn't help any.

"If you didn't want to help me, you could have just told me," she said. "I trusted you about fifty-fifty - will cowardice win above fear? Apparently so. But why are you _here? _You're not stupid, either. You're not intelligent - clever, yes, but not intelligent - but you're not _this_ idiotic. What's your motivation?"

The Pickpocket held out his free hand to show her, the sleeve still rolled up, blue sparks fizzing under his skin as if it was glass or water. "You're _killing me, _Tia. You're killing us. All of us. You're killing _yourself._ You cannot replace the Trickster, my friend, you're still his creation. If his dying is affecting me, and you know I'm just an idiot who wandered into a tent for a couple months, then it's going to get you too, no matter what kind of stick you're holding when Kooza collapses. This is our last chance. I... don't want to see you die."

One half of Tia's mouth quirked into a smile. "How thoughtful of you. Nice speech, Pickpocket, but it's not convincing me. Tell me, how do you know that this isn't just transferral stuff? No pain, no gain. We're not dying, idiot. Now give me the wand and I'll give you another chance."

The Pickpocket shook his head to clear the buzzing in his ears. This all needed to stop, right now. He couldn't think straight anymore, and he had to stop treating Tia like the person she used to be. "Nope," he said.

Tia took a step toward him, her brows snapping down like shutters. "Have it your own way, Pickpocket, and don't say I didn't give you a choice. You're with me or you're dead, that's how it's going to work, and you've just chosen to be dead."

The Pickpocket's brain cleared a bit at that, and he suddenly realized exactly how ridiculous this entire situation was. He was standing in an incense-scented apartment holding a magic wand, being menaced by a trapeze artist, and sparking blue. And to tell the truth, he didn't feel all that bad.

He grinned. "You can't catch meeeeee!" he called, and dove out the second-story window.

A/N:

*God, I love doing this with Pickpocket. I would have him speak in Swedish, too, if I had any illusions that any of my readers would be able to understand him. I've rather veered away from German Pickpocket to a universal-deceiver Pickpocket. XD But, you know, _catchez-moi!_


	10. Kooza

Chapter 10: Kooza

The Innocent was tracing the seams on his seat, and wishing that he and the King had something to at least play tic-tac-toe on or something to talk about, when Christian vaulted into the driver's seat out of nowhere and started scrambling with the ignition. He looked as if he'd been attacked by a gang of shrubs, and he was missing a shoe, but he'd come back. And...

"Is that the wand?" the King demanded. "Yes," Christian told him breathlessly. "And we are being chased by a trapeze artist. I just jumped out of her window." Innocent stared at him, and then looked around wildly for Tia. Hopefully she was still making her way downstairs.

"What, the second-story window?"

"Yes. There were bushes. Damn this stupid car, get into gear already!"

They swerved out of their parking space just as Tia slammed through the front door and started sprinting toward them. "Oh, no, you don't!" Christian shouted cheerfully at her. "Byeeeee, Tia! - Damn that woman, she's fast... _move,_ cars!"

Tia _was_ fast. She managed a grab at their trunk as they pulled onto the road, and when it was apparent that she wasn't going to manage to hitch a ride that way, she went running toward one of the other two cars in the parking lot. Christian cursed. "_That _is her car? I was sure... All right, m'friends, hold on!"

And they were off, down the street at a speed only moderate enough to narrowly avoid crashing into buildings. Innocent thought that he was never going to want to get into a car again. Especially since, looking in the rearview mirror, it appeared that Tia was following them just as fast as they were going.

"CAR CHASE!" the King shouted, going from depressed to hyperexcited with no noticeable transition. "Shut up," Christian told him. And then, "Shit. There is no way I can do this with one hand. Hold th - no, wait, don't." He clamped the wand between his teeth, both hands now free to help along the not-crashing-into-buildings aspect of things. Considering that the wand itself looked to be going just as spastic as Christian or the King, Innocent wasn't exactly sure about the safety of this maneuver.

"You do know that's a highly dangerous, unstable magical item you've got in your mouth, right?" the King said helpfully, apparently thinking along the same lines.

"Sudd uch." Then, because apparently Christian was still Christian even when sparking blue and being chased by an insane circus performer, "Das ut ee sed."

_"What?"_

"Dass. Hwut. ... egger _ind_. Sudd uch."

The light was rather pretty by this time of day, actually, rather yellow. It appeared that Christian's and Tia's cars were about evenly matched, because the trapeze artist stuck to their tail like she was being towed by them. Innocent had no idea what they were going to do when they got to Kooza - he assumed that was where they were going, anyway.

Christian took the wand out of his mouth for long enough to tell him. "We make a run for it, okay? You, my friend -" the King, who was only visible about half of the time at this point - "can stay here, but _you_, my young friend, are coming with me. I'll see if I can beat her to the tent, and I'll try and find the Trickster. But you need to come too. Okay?"

Innocent nodded, and Christian stuck the wand back in his mouth. Tia was screaming things at them which he couldn't quite hear above the wind. It was all he could do to stop his shirt from being blown off, actually. He wished that Christian had somehow had time to actually re-convert the convertible before he started driving them everywhere at ninety miles per hour.

Seeing the yellow-and-red tent top appear behind the buildings felt like coming back to a home that wasn't home anymore - what was going to be in there? Would they be safe if they got there? Maybe - and this was a cheering thought - the tent wouldn't let Tia in. But that was assuming that Christian beat her across the parking lot in the first place.

The race they had been running was nothing to the one that they were about to start. The car full of Koozians had something like a five-second head start when they pulled into the empty parking lot. Christian started taking them toward the chain-link fence, but when Tia began to pull in front of them, blocking their path to the tent, he hit the brakes and abandoned ship, running toward the fence. He had insanely long legs, and Innocent, as he abandoned the King and scrambled out after the thief, wondered how he hadn't noticed them before. Tia ignored him, focusing on the man with the wand, and both of them got to and over the fence well before Innocent. He scrabbled and wriggled his way to the top of the fence, breathing hard and unable to focus on anything but the chain links in front of his face. He had no idea what was going on by or in the tent.

Neither Christian nor Tia was in sight when he finally dropped to the ground on the other side of the ten-foot fence. The tent actually opened its flaps for him as he approached, and he hurried inside, tripping over seats and and losing what little wind he had left before his eyes adjusted.

"Trickster!" Christian was shouting, sounding echoey and abnormally loud in the mostly empty tent. "Trickster!" He was running up the bataclan stairs, somewhere around the second story, searching for a man who was apparently not here anymore, and Tia was presumably after him. Innocent started to follow them, and stopped when the two of them emerged on the top floor. They were both glowing enough to illuminate the circle of railing, the brightest light in the dim tent. Christian still had the wand, at least. But there was only one way onto and off of the top level, Innocent remembered, and Tia was currently standing in front of it.

"Wand, Pickpocket," she said, and held out her hand for it in a gesture eerily reminiscent of the Trickster. Was it the Innocent's imagination, or _was_ she becoming more Tricksterlike, here inside the realm she'd been absent from for so long?

Christian grinned nervously and backed away from the trapeze artist. "_No, _Tia. You are not getting this again."

"Why not? Why not, Pickpocket? Tell me, where's your Trickster now? He's _dead,_ Pickpocket. That means you answer to me, and right now you are disobeying my direct orders."

"The Trickster is not my boss," Christian snapped. "I don't _have_ a boss. If you can command Kooza, then command this wand into your hand! But you _can't,_ can you?"

Tia shrugged easily. With a tanktop on, you could see how muscular she really was, and it was a bit scary. There was absolutely no doubt that she was originally from this realm. "Not yet," she said. "So I'm going to have to come over there and take it."

"Ooo. Scary."

And then Christian was backed up against the railing of the bataclan, holding the wand out of Tia's reach behind him as she slammed him against the gold metal, just over waist-height. "Twenty-five feet," she snapped. "Twenty-five feet is how far you have to fall. See if your fat little friend - yes, kid, I see you over there - see if he can catch you then."

Christian swallowed. "Tia," he began, and stopped, wincing.

"_Stop calling me that._ That's not my name anymore." The trapeze artist stared at him from a distance of about four inches. "I can collect that wand from your dead hand just as easily as I can take it from your live one. It's your choice."

"We're going to die anyway," Christian said quietly, barely audible from where the Innocent stood frozen, staring up at the two of them.

"Your choice, again." And she shoved him in the chest, hard, over the railing. Innocent's shout caught in his throat as Christian somehow managed to twist around and grab onto the filigree of the railing with one hand, still holding onto the wand with the other. He readjusted his grip, trying to climb back up, and the trapeze artist kicked his fingers hard, rattling the railing. His grip dropped onto the rim of the third story, and she lifted her foot to stomp on his fingers again.

At which point Christian apparently realized that he was in possession of a magical wand, and had better use it while he still could. He flicked his free hand at the woman standing over him, and though Innocent couldn't see anything, he _felt_ it - something up there, affecting the air. The trapeze artist certainly felt it - she shouted, and staggered backwards a step or two, fighting something invisible which was apparently wrapping itself around her. Amazingly, she appeared to be winning, and as she fought her way back toward Christian, who was flickering on and off like a light with a bad connection and whose fingers were slowly slipping off the narrow rim of the bataclan, he glanced down toward the kid on the edge of the stage who was staring up at him openmouthed.

From then on in Innocent's memory, everything was a series of images, strobe-like vignettes of happening caught in slow motion.

"Innocent!" Christian shouted. "_Catch!"_

He tossed the wand in a slow underhand arc to the Innocent, who caught it easily...

...The world went white, as if everything there ever was had been eradicated completely...

...The lights came back, and the trapeze artist was laughing, saying "What was _that_ supposed to do?"...

..."Look behind you," Christian told her, an edge in his voice which Innocent couldn't quite make sense of...

...The Trickster tapped her on the shoulder, and she turned...

...The Pickpocket's shout was eradicated by another flash of light, this one warm and purple and as far emotionally from the first one as emptiness was from fullness...

...And then the warm lights and the warm colors were back, and time flowed normally again, and Tia Rapez was gone.

Innocent sprinted up the stairs to the third story as fast as he could. When he got there, Trickster was kneeling and pulling Christian back into the bataclan. Innocent's enormous urge to hug him was quelled as soon as the Trickster turned and looked at him with eyes that were intense and, just for this moment, not familiar at all. He, and the rest of Kooza, looked more like their old selves than they ever had.

"Phew," Christian said, pulling himself upright on the railing and grinning at the Trickster. "That was a close one, huh?"

The Trickster nodded, and then turned to Innocent and nodded again, as one craftsman to another. Innocent handed him the wand, and, looking up at him, realized that he had grown a bit since he had been in Kooza last. The difference in their heights wasn't quite as much as it had been once.

The Trickster smiled at him, and then disappeared. To get things done, no doubt.

"Holy shit," Christian said, spoiling the moment a bit. "Let us not do that again, my friend, huh?"

_You called me Innocent back there. _But the Innocent didn't say anything. He never did. He just nonverbally demanded an explanation to everything that had happened in the last five minutes.

"You're linked to the Trickster," Christian explained to him. He was still catching his breath against the railing. Innocent joined him in leaning on it. "So if you have the wand, it's like he has it too, you know? But it only works in Kooza, which was why we couldn't do it before." He stared at the Innocent for a bit. "I wonder if..." Then he shook his head. "No. This wasn't a test. But you performed admirably anyway, my young friend. No less than we would expect from our heir."

_What?_

But Christian was already changing the subject, turning to stare down at the stage, on which the charivari had assembled, gathering staves and scythes. It looked, Innocent thought, like they were about to go on a very large bird hunt. "You probably won't be seeing much of me anymore," Christian said. "The Trickster doesn't want me around you. I am not really a good influence." He laughed.

Innocent hugged him, in lieu of Trickster. It was not unsatisfying. And then the Pickpocket was gone too, leaving the Innocent alone on the tower, looking out over this realm, this strange kingdom of magic and madness and joy. This place where he undeniably, completely belonged.


	11. Epilogue

Epilogue

It was a week or two later - the Innocent had stopped counting time at this point. Kooza had been restored to normal, or, well, as normal as it normally was. Nobody had said anything to him about going back to the Other world, and so he stayed, and it felt as if he had always been here, as if he had come home. He was happier than he had ever been.

The charivari loved him, as a kind of plaything, and he loved them, more or less. They kept him bluffing, like an extremely large collection of aunts and uncles. He was getting to know the other inhabitants of the realm better too, the daring tightwire artists and the exotic little contortionists and the current trapeze artist, who always gave him a twinge of some not-quite-identifiable feeling. She reminded him too much of Tia.

Christian was right - the Trickster had kept him out of Innocent's way since they had all returned to the realm. But the King and his sidekicks still hung around, goofier than ever, and Sergei and probably-Pete had berated the two of them endlessly for leaving them out of all the action. The Innocent didn't mind, really, though he did sneak off after a while when their insanity got to be too much. The dog had adopted him, and followed him around everywhere. This was the best part of staying in Kooza, really. He had always wanted a dog.

But he hadn't seen the Trickster. He wasn't sure if Kooza's creator was intentionally avoiding him or whether he was just busy with other things, but since that last overly action-packed day, he hadn't seen a glimpse of that red-and-yellow suit. Or the blue and orange one, for that matter.

On this particular day, he was back on top of the tower - which he had since learned was called a bataclan - hanging out almost alone in the tent, leaning against the railing and looking out over the realm, which he now realized was rather small, but in a cozy way. There were a few charivari stretching in the shadows, but mostly it was just him and the bataclan and the stage, which was painted to look like a starry sky. He'd never really had time to look at it before. It was very pretty.

"Why don't you talk?" a voice asked next to him him. He turned.

The Trickster was leaning on the railing next to him, casual and catlike, like they'd spent the every day of the past two weeks together. There was no one else around. It was only he who could have spoken. There was no 'Thank you for saving my life.' No explanation for anything which had happened, no discussion of anything which might happen in the future. Just one small, direct question.

Trickster looked straight at him, unblinking, his face serious except for his blue eyes, which were sparkling, and his neatly painted mouth, the corner of which twitched up. There was no way out, no way to pretend that he, the Innocent, hadn't heard or couldn't respond.

The Innocent thought, and because it had been a serious question, he really did think it out. After a long silence, he said, "Why don't you?"

And the Trickster threw back his head and laughed and laughed and laughed.

The End (or, alternately, End of Part One)

...

A/N: This is the first longer fanfic I've ever finished. I hope you enjoyed it. I know I enjoyed writing it.

Please note me if you have unresolved questions about the story or characters (most of the things which I left cryptic are that way on purpose, but that doesn't mean I won't share the answers with you if you ask).


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